Tag: Heart n Soul

The International symposium MOBILE MUSIC IN THE MAKING 2017 was last weekend and I was lucky enough to get along to speak at it, to meet people, to catch up with long time friends, and to put some faces to names who I’ve known for a long time. As so often happens with events like this you don’t really know what to expect until you’re there, but MMM2017 exceeded any expectations I had by a long way, which is a tribute to Matthias Krebs and the team of the Research Center for Mobile Music Making and App Music and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) that worked with him for months to make it such an amazing event for everyone involved.

Gathered there was a fantastic mix of developers, musicians, academics and more besides. The range of talks, demonstrations, and performances was excellent, and if anything I just wish I could have gone to more of it, but sadly I still lack the ability to be in more than one place at a time.

So for now I’m just going to pull out the highlights for me personally, and I’ll start with meeting someone who I’ve wanted to meet in person for a very long time.

Yep, it’s Mr Jakob Haq in person. It was wonderful to meet him on the Friday when I arrived (very late) and have a catch up. You can also see in the first picture Dr Ben Schogler from Skoog. More about him and about Skoog later. Jakob and I managed to catch up a few times over the weekend, but as you can imagine it just wasn’t enough so I’m going to have to get to meet up with him again I think.

The Saturday of MMM2017 was the big day for me. I was speaking a couple of times, but also there were some amazing sessions I really wanted to get to, so let’s go over a few of those.

Firstly there was AudioBus 3:

AudioBus 3 is coming soon. As far as I know it’s due to drop on the 28th (apologies, this should be the 27th) of this month, so there isn’t too long to wait. The big new features in AB3 are MIDI and a Mixer. Sebastian’s talk focussed on their journey to AB3 which was really interesting. You might wonder why MIDI is such a big deal, but as Sebastian explained, every app treats MIDI differently. Getting one single way to configure MIDI via AB3 is going to make a huge difference, at least in my view anyway.

Another interesting view from Sebastian’s talk was around the UI/UX approach they’ve taken with AB3. It’s very user focussed indeed and from I could see I think it will make the creative interaction when using AB3 a lot easier and less distracting.

Sadly we weren’t able to see the mixer in AB3 but as there isn’t long to wait now it’s something else to look forward to.

Next was Hari, the maker of the AC Sabre. Hari talked about the idea and evolution of the concepts behind the Sabre, which was really interesting even though I’ve heard him give a shorter version of this talk before. He was of course very entertaining and enlightening. The only downside was that I didn’t get to see Hari perform, which is always a joy.

As I mentioned before it was a slightly unexpected pleasure to meet Ben from Skoog at MMM2017. I’ve known of the Skoog for a very long time now although I’d never got my hands on one. I found it intriguing to hear Ben talk about the process that they went through to develop the device and how it got to where it is now. It’s definitely something that I want to follow up on and try out personally as well. I think that the Skoog has some really unusual potential as an instrument in a lot of settings. Expect to hear more about it in the coming weeks.

If you want to find out more about Skoog you should check out their web site and also they have a swift playground that you can use on your iPad too.

Next was Russell from Trackd. Trackd is a collaborative 8 track recorder / mixer for iPhone that’s getting some real attention. It allows users to collaborate with each other from anywhere in the world. I’ve mentioned Trackd before, originally when they pitched at Music Tech Pitch last year, and also around the work they’re doing with Dave Stewart and in education.

Russell talked through the background to the app and a little bit around where he wants to go next with this. Personally I think that Trackd has a bright future ahead and will be a very useful tool for a whole host of musicians from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences. Again, you’ll be hearing more about this soon.

With events like MMM2017 one of the most import things to do is just to be around. People are always showing new ideas, apps etc, and one such app is PolyJam. You can take a look at the app as it’s beta now, click here and scroll down.

I got a chance to try out PolyJam and was impressed at its immediacy, simplicity, accessibility and just how much fun it was to use. So I’m really looking forward to seeing it for real and hopefully bringing it into some of the work I do at Heart n Soul as well.

Peter Kirn gave a really good talk about libPd and reminded me of the original RJDJ apps and the origins of using Pd in mobile. I found this very inspiring indeed and he touched on apps like MobMuPlat and PdParty which I really need to revisit.

I was lucky enough to invited to speak at MMM2017 and I gave two talks. The first of which was around the work we do at Heart n Soul in digital music making with people with disabilities. This was part of the education strand of the event, which I wish I’d had more time to be a part of. I’m hoping that it won’t be too long before the videos of the event come out and when that happens I’ll be sure to share those with you.

I also gave a talk about the future of mobile music where I shared some themes and topics that I think are important to what’s happening in mobile and where we might go next. I’m not going to go through all of those here as I think that they deserve their own space. So I’ll do something separate on those soon.

At the end of the event there were a bunch of totally excellent performances. All very different, all made with mobile. I just wish there’d been more. I think there could’ve been a while day of performances alone.

Finally I’d just like to round off with how nice it was to meet people at MMM2017. There were so many people that I caught up with, either for the first time in person, or after a long gap. It was awesome.

Events like MMM2017 are so important for sharing ideas, for meeting and getting to know each other. I hope that MMM continues and that we see an MMM2018 too. I’d love to be involved. For now it’s worth taking a look the conference site and especially the ‘flashback’ page which will continue to be updated with photos and video soon enough.

I’ll leave you with one quote from an attendee right at the end of the conference, “It’s like finding a family that you didn’t know you had”. I think that’s spot on.

As I’m sure you’ll be aware I work with Heart n Soul, an amazing charity that works with people with learning disabilities. One of the main things I do there is bring innovative music technology companies of all sizes and shapes into Heart n Soul for our artists to test and give feedback on. As an aside, if you’re interested in being a part of that, let me know.

But right now I want to let you know about an event we’re running with Native Instruments next month.

Native Instruments have partnered with Heart n Soul and the London Music Hack Space to bring Reaktor builders a real test of their ensemble building skills. At the next Native Instruments London meet up on the 4th of December we’ll be running a hack day to build a Reaktor synth and an accompanying interface for Heart n Soul artists.

The challenge is in two parts; creating a synth for Heart n Soul using Reaktor, and also building a physical interface for the synth so it can be used by Heart n Soul artists. For the physical interface we’ve partnered with the London Music Hack Space, bringing their expertise into the mix.

In advance of the hack day we’ll be asking people to sign up to the challenge and form teams combining Reaktor builders and interface builders. On the day itself we’ll have teams working directly with artists from Heart n Soul to understand how they would like the synth and it’s interface to operate, giving key insights into how to build and design accessible musical instruments.

Of course there’ll be prizes too. Actually some pretty amazing prizes. More on that soon.

If this is something that interests you then watch this space as I’ll have details of how to sign up for the challenge very soon indeed.

Ableton’s Loop summit starts on Friday this week and I’ll be there for the whole weekend with Heart n Soul presenting this workshop, and it would be great if you wanted to come along and find out more about what we do at Heart n Soul and, more importantly, how.

If you’re going to be around please say hello as it would be lovely to meet/catch up with as many people as possible.

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You may not have heard of Pyka Loop before, their the maker of a rather amazing iPad app, that lets you create remarkable music from the sounds of the world around you.

Their app has big bold visuals and simple, intuitive interface. Pyka_loop is all about exploring new kinds of sound through experimentation & play. Which is also just about exactly what SoundLab is all about too.

With Pyka you can record, playback, loop, pitchshift and modulate any audio to spontaneously create compositions from the unlikeliest of sound sources. It’s a lot of fun for casual messing around, psychedelic street walks, live performance, one-man boogaloo … and the foundation of Pyka Loop’s much-loved looper courses for schools.

And our course they’re going to be with us tonight at the Beautiful Octopus Club, so come down and join us for an amazing event. Check out all the details here, and you can find out more about Pyka_loop on the app store too.

I’ve actually lost track of the number of events that I’ve used the AlphaSphere at. It’s a mainstay for SoundLab and we’ve loved it ever since we got it a couple of years ago. So it’s great to have them back again this year. I’m really looking forward to seeing how people react to it. That’s always a great experience.

If you’ve never played with an AlphaSphere before you should definitely come to the Beautiful Octopus Club today, 7pm at the Royal Festival Hall. You’re going to love it. Check out the details on our Facebook page here.

I’ve been a fan of Reactify Music since they launched their CRTL app (and I interviewed them about it). It was a great app and had a lot of potential. Of course it isn’t the only thing that Reactify do, in fact they’re actually quite prolific, and right now are involved with a variety of projects. You can find a few of them by searching their name on PalmSounds.

Well I’m very pleased to announce that Reactify are going to be with us tomorrow (9th September) at the Beautiful Octopus Club at the Royal Festival Hall. Reactify will be bringing their CTRL installation for you to play with. It’s pretty amazing to use, and I think that you’re going to love it!

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We’re really looking forward to having some very different and very interesting musical interfaces with us tomorrow at the Beautiful Octopus Club thanks to the Bela Platform coming to play with us on the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall.

I’ve been watching the Bela platform since first arrived on Kickstarter and it really is an amazing piece of technology that has enabled some inspiring projects. Tomorrow the team will be bringing projects that have been made with Bela, so come down and play and find something really different at the Beautiful Octopus Club, so please do check out the event details at our Facebook event page here.

I’ve know Dr Mick Grierson for a while now and I have to say that he is one of the smartest people in the music tech world that I know of. It’s going to be great to have the Kurv shown at the Beautiful Octopus Club this Friday (9th September) at the Royal Festival Hall.

If you’ve never heard of Kurv, here’s a bit more detail …

Based on research by Dr Mick Grierson at Goldsmiths, University of London, the Kurv combines advanced music synthesis software, sensor technologies and machine learning to enable an unprecedented level of new musical expression.

The Kurv consists of two parts: a button board, where you press chords and notes, and a pick. The pick contains a sensor that recognises strumming movements, just like playing a normal guitar. It has acoustic, electric and bass guitars, and comes with an app for iPhone or iPad, which connects via Bluetooth so there are no wires in the way of rocking out.

Mick says: “For the first time, we can run advanced music synthesis engines on your mobile phone. When you combine this power with wearable technologies and machine learning, you can develop new musical instruments that were considered science fiction only a few years ago.”

Dr Mick Grierson’s work on the Kurv forms part of a long-term Goldsmiths-led and European Commission-funded project called Rapid Mix, a consortium of computer scientists devoting years of research to the design and evaluation of wearable human-computer interfaces in creative fields such as computer games and music.

He’s also the research lead on SoundLab, a project testing out which digital music devices and apps can help people with learning disabilities make the music they want to make.

You can find more details on the Kurv here, and you can see it in action on Friday at the Beautiful Octopus Club. So please do check out the event details at our Facebook event page here.

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You’ve heard me talking about the AC Sabre app before. I’m a big fan, a really big fan. I first saw the Sabre back in November last year when Hari, the brains behind this performance app came to the SoundLab event we had at NESTA. He caught my eye because everyone who used the Sabre had an almost instant smile on their faces, and that’s been the reception it’s had consistently ever since.

If you haven’t tried it out then you’re now going to get the opportunity this Friday at the Royal Festival Hall from 7pm. The AC Sabre will be there, not only to play with, but also Hari will be giving a performance too.

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If you don’t know SubPac then I can safely say that you really don’t know what you’re missing. Having tried it once before back at SoundLab’s NESTA PlaySpace event, I fell in love. It’s an amazing exprerience. So if you get a chance to try one out, take it! And guess what, you’ve got a chance to do just that at the Royal Festival Hall this Friday!

I’m very happy that SubPac are going to be with us at the Beautiful Octopus Club this Friday (9th of September) at the Royal Festival Hall from 7pm until midnight. Full details for the event are here, and you can find out more about SubPac and their amazing technology at their site here.